Lord Wolfson replies...

It would be “constitutionally improper” for ministers to comply with treaty obligations if that would mean ignoring laws made by parliament, the shadow attorney general said yesterday. Lord Wolfson of Tredegar KC (pictured) was responding to allegations by Lord Hermer KC, the government’s senior law officer, that the Conservative front-bencher had adopted a “pick-and-mix approach, in which states can sometimes justifiably refuse to comply with their international legal obligations when they judge it not to be in their national interests to do so”.

In an interview for my podcast A Lawyer Talks, Wolfson said that ministers would always seek to comply with international law if they were able to do so. But, he continued:

a minister has to abide by an act of parliament and it would be constitutionally improper, I would suggest, for the minister to say, “I’m going to ignore what an act of parliament says in order to comply with a treaty obligation”.

In truth, he claimed, the Labour government was itself taking a pick-and-mix approach to international law. “We do — under this government and under previous governments — legislate, for example, contrary to double-taxation treaties,” Wolfson said. “We do put in place tariffs which are contrary to the WTO [World Trade Organisation].”

Wolfson has known Hermer for 30 years and they have a great deal in common — apart from their politics. The shadow attorney general’s declared aim is always to “play the ball and not the man”. Listen to A Lawyer Talks and hear whether he succeeded — particularly when I asked Wolfson about Hermer’s references to Carl Schmitt.

Here’s a short glossary for non-specialists:

• a fortiori all the more so

• purdah period between election announcement and formation of new government

• spad minister’s special adviser

• sui generis unique

• “thick” or “thin” rule of law concept

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